Ukulele Virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro Performs At Napa Opera

Jake Shimabukuro may be the first jazz musician to gain a pop following via the internet sensation Youtube.com, which makes streaming video instantly available. Aptly situated on a rocky outcropping in Central Park’s Strawberry Fields, Shimabukuro is caught in the act of turning George Harrison’s “White Album” classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” into a scorching solo tour de force.

With close to 100,000 hits, the four minute clip served as a savvy preview of his first solo album, “Gently Weeps,” which hit stores in September. In truth, Shimabukuro isn’t a jazz musician per se, though jazz is certainly one facet of his ever-expanding musical persona. A gifted improviser who is perfectly comfortable reharmonizing American Songbook standards, Shimabukuro is a dues-paying member of what Bela Fleck calls “the odd instrument club,” a loosely affiliated group of musical explorers determined to turn their instruments into all-terrain vehicles.

Over the past six years, Shimabukuro has transformed the diminutive four-string uke into an infinitely pliable instrument, capable of generating everything from crunching, effects laden rock to sensuously swinging jazz. Along the way he’s shared stages with a plethora of artists, including finger style guitar star Kaki King, vocal wizard Bobby McFerrin, mandolin master Mike Marshall and fiddle renegade Darol Anger.

In the summer of 2002 Shimabukuro signed with Sony’s Epic Records International, a label with a strong presence in Japan. He has won a huge Japanese following in recent years through more than two-dozen tours of the country. And he became a hometown hero when his first CD, “Sunday Morning,” won Instrumental Album of the Year at the 2003 Na Hoku Hanohano Awards (Hawaii’s Grammy), where he was also named Favorite Entertainer of the Year, honors he repeated in 2004 with his second album, “Crosscurrent.” More importantly, Shimabukuro’s status in the unofficial but tight-knit fraternity of maverick string players was cemented when banjo master Bela Fleck asked him to record on the Flecktones’ album “Little Worlds,” and then invited him to tour with the band as an opening act.

For fiddler Darol Anger, Shimabukuro is the latest champion “bringing the string community back into the forefront of modern music.” “Jake is a complete genius on the uke,” says Anger, who has nurtured several generations of brilliant string players, most recently in his ensemble Republic of Strings. “It just makes me so happy to hear him. There are virtuosos who make you feel, ‘Oh God, I’ll never be able to do that,’ and there are virtuosos who make you happy to be alive. Jake is one of those people who make you happy to be alive, which is the highest compliment I can give to any musician.” -- www.napavalleyoperahouse.org